George Lucas made a fortune out of turning his love of popular art into “Star Wars.”

Now, he’s using a good chunk of that money to build a temple to that art.

“Narrative art is the one that shows us what we believe in and what we want to be,” Lucas said at the groundbreaking ceremony for his Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Exposition Park Wednesday.

“I think that’s very fascinating, you can see it through history, and it’s very important,” added Lucas, whose museum will showcase his collection of fine, pop, illustrative and other art pieces that tell stories, from ancient times through the 21st Century. “The emphasis that I’d like to put on narrative art is that it does tell us who we are and where we came from.”

Construction on the museum is scheduled to be completed in late 2021, with no date yet set for when the museum will open to the public.

Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson have privately funded the project with a gift of over $1 billion. That will cover the non-profit institution’s building costs, the value of Lucas’ vast art collection which it will display and an operating endowment which, among other things, will pay for new additions to the museum’s collection.

“Yes, this is an art museum,” said Lucas, who joined several dignitaries, including L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti at the groundbreaking ceremony. “But we’re trying to position it, also, as an anthropological museum. Popular art presents insight into a society and what they aspire to.”

“Yes, this is an art museum. But we’re trying to position it, also, as an anthropological museum. Popular art presents insight into a society and what they aspire to.”

— George Lucas, filmmaker

That statement reflects what the museum’s founding president, Don Bacigalupi, told the Daily News in a phone interview Wednesday morning before the event. The institution plans to help aspiring artists throughout the L.A. area — but especially in the South of Downtown district of the city that it neighbors—learn about art and achieve their creative potential.

“One of the reasons why we are building the museum where we are, in Expo Park in South Los Angeles, is specifically to work with and have a positive impact on the community of neighbors,” Bacigalupi said. “And in the neighborhood of something like 100 public schools, where students can avail themselves of the programs that we are going to be offering.”

An ‘entry point’ for artists and underserved

Alberto Retana, President and CEO of the area activist group the Community Coalition, happily told the Daily News that the Lucas Museum people have been meeting with his organization for nearly two years to work out how best they can serve the surrounding area.

“We raised the community benefits side of the construction of the museum as well as the running of the actual museum,” Retana said. “We’ve had conversations, they’ve been very open to that idea. There are a lot of opportunities with the museum for developing job opportunities and apprenticeship programs for young people [like] how do we prepare and train them to be docents? I mean, L.A. is rich in art and culture, so I think it’s going to be an entry point for many African-American and Latino youths who would otherwise not have that kind of access point to move forward.”

As for the gigantic local community of film, television and other forms of moving picture artists, well, the Lucas Museum is endowed by the most successful moviemaker of all time.

“Obviously, the most advanced version of narrative art is the movies,” Lucas remarked.

“It’s a very timely arrival in Los Angeles to celebrate these industries and, really, the mantel of Los Angeles as a driver of stroytelling worldwide,” Bacigalupi added. “We’re not linked in any direct way to the industry, but certainly Hollywood and every other kind of filmmaking and storymaking will be part of our program.”

One honored guest at the groundbreaking, longtime Lucas pal and “Godfather” director Francis Coppola, told the Daily News that he has faith in the museum’s capacity to serve L.A.’s vast creative community.

“This museum will, without any doubt, influence young minds for decades to come,” Coppola, 78, said. “And young minds don’t necessarily have to be younger people. George has a very young mind, and many elders do. So I think the museum will have a major influence on all people who get the privilege of coming to see it.”

The Beijing-based architect Ma Yonsong-designed, appropriately spaceshippy building and 11 acres of new park and garden space are replacing parking lots in Exposition Park near the campus of Lucas’ alma mater, the University of Southern California. The museum’s five levels of approximately 300,000 square feet of interior space will provide about 125,000 square feet of gallery space for Lucas’ Degas, Norman Rockwell, Maynard Dixon, Robert Crumb, Frank Frazetta and hundreds of other fine and popular art pieces that express the many ways, throughout human history, that pictures can tell stories.

Emphases will also be placed on photography, digital and, of course, cinematic art (and not only from “Star Wars”). The facility will feature two state-of-the-art movie theaters, restaurants, digital and editing classrooms and a free research library.

As earlier noted, massive education programs are being designed. The project is expected to generate around 1,500 construction and 350 permanent jobs.

Built by Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, efforts will be made to include local and diverse businesses in both the construction and operation of the facility, including women-, minority- and veteran-owned small businesses. Construction jobs will be provided to unionized area workers, and local and disadvantaged L.A. residents will be given employment and training opportunities.

The Lucases settled on L.A. for the site of their museum 14 months ago, following years of frustrating negotiations with the cities of Chicago and San Francisco.

“I want to thank everybody who contributed to this – three times in three different cities,” Lucas quipped at the groundbreaking. “It takes a village to do something like this, and that’s why the community was included.”

“This is a place where you create,” Mayor Garcetti remarked about Los Angeles at the groundbreaking ceremony. “This is a place where we always ask, how can we do things differently? And how do we belong together?”

Hopes, obviously, are that the Lucas Museum will provide good answers to those questions.

Bob Straus has been covering film at the L.A. Daily News since 1989. He wouldn't say the movies have gotten worse in that time, but they do keep getting harder to love. Fortunately, he still loves them.

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